


The Yellow Place

by SingularCoincidence



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingularCoincidence/pseuds/SingularCoincidence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Climate change</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Yellow Place

Waiting in the dark, Sherlock can just hear the ocean pounding against the cliffs. The rustling of wind in the hedge grass, the whispers of home-bound bats. Later, a lizard scuttles along the fence.

  
By the time the shapes of the plants become visible the garden is humming. The combination of the latest mite-resistant bees and the noctifloral cucurbitas promises to be sustainable. He moves his chair closer to the plants and begins to record his observations.

  
Loc.SUS13 18.5.2039 04:37

  
Today would have been John and Mary’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary if…well, that had really never been a possibility.

  
As they have been doing for the last nine days, the bees pollinate the courgettes first and then move to the cucumber vines further from the house. He sends a report to his research group and continues his surveillance.

  
One winter afternoon, a few years after all the shooting and the shouting (that part of it anyway) was finally over, an investigation into a fraud case (the solution of which had been disappointingly obvious after one glance at the wallpaper in the manager’s office) had brought him back to the hotel. The orangerie had been smaller than he remembered. The vines and birds on the walls had been painted over with a duller yellow, almost beige in the harsh artificial light. Just a room for hire, with his footsteps echoing between the bare tables. Imagination had filled the space with guests, the smell of hothouse flowers, and, invisible to him then as so many things about Mary had been: cold idealism, blind prejudice, nearly exhausted fear.  
There, at that spot, the person at the center of all of it had been sitting. A few feet in front of him and he might as well have been blind. It’s true, he had been trying to solve one attempted murder and prevent a second, while giving a best man’s speech…and of course there was always something.

  
Meat dagger. Honestly.

  
“Something funny?”

  
He stands up and joins John at the small table under the wisteria for their morning tea. The sky is cloudless and most of the bees have gone back to their hive for the day. He looks down and sees the honey dipper held out to him; an offering, golden in the sunlight.


End file.
